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Homochirality is an obvious characteristic of life on Earth, yet extraterrestrial samples contain largely racemic compounds. [7] It is not known whether homochirality existed before life, whether the building blocks of life must have this particular chirality, or whether life must be homochiral at all.
The most well-studied example is the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which independently evolved at the same positions regardless of the underlying sublineage. [272] The most ominent examples from the pre-Omicron era were E484K and N501Y, while in the Omicron era examples include R493Q, R346X, N444X, L452X, N460X, F486X, and F490X.
The pygmy mammoth is an example of insular dwarfism, a case of Foster's rule, its unusually small body size an adaptation to the limited resources of its island home.. A biological rule or biological law is a generalized law, principle, or rule of thumb formulated to describe patterns observed in living organisms.
The evolution of biological complexity is one important outcome of the process of evolution. [1] Evolution has produced some remarkably complex organisms – although the actual level of complexity is very hard to define or measure accurately in biology, with properties such as gene content, the number of cell types or morphology all proposed as possible metrics.
How life originated from inorganic matter remains an unresolved problem in biology. One prominent hypothesis is that life first appeared in the form of short self-replicating RNA polymers. [ 117 ] On this view, life may have come into existence when RNA chains first experienced the basic conditions, as conceived by Charles Darwin, for natural ...
Parasitism is a relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or in another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. [20] The parasite either feeds on the host, or, in the case of intestinal parasites, consumes some of its food.
This glossary of biology terms is a list of definitions of fundamental terms and concepts used in biology, the study of life and of living organisms.It is intended as introductory material for novices; for more specific and technical definitions from sub-disciplines and related fields, see Glossary of cell biology, Glossary of genetics, Glossary of evolutionary biology, Glossary of ecology ...
[5] [6] After growth from the zygote to the adult, cell division by mitosis allows for continual construction and repair of the organism. [7] The human body experiences about 10 quadrillion cell divisions in a lifetime. [8] The primary concern of cell division is the maintenance of the original cell's genome.